Just what you wanted. An opening track that matches banal piano noodling to an address by Greta Thunberg. Followed by a hugely unconvincing stab at tuneless industrial metal on a song called ‘People’, in which the aforementioned — me and you, not them, of course — are cautioned to ‘WAKE UP!!’ Leafy Wilmslow’s middle-class skag-head prophet, Matty Healy, is back, then, with a series of injunctions for us all, spread over interminable length and always skating on the very edge of parody. The 1975 are probably Britain’s biggest ‘rock’ band — those quote marks are needed — and this vast slab of pretentious, gullible, vacuous commendations to us all went straight in at number one. The man is an endlessly credulous, grandstanding ass and nowhere near as bright as he considers himself to be.
Rod Liddle
Skates on the edge of parody: The 1975’s Notes on a Conditional Form reviewed
Matty Healy, the middle-class skag-head prophet and grandstanding ass, is back with a fine album – if you ignore the execrable lyrics
issue 06 June 2020
Grade: B+
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